The invention relates to an analyzer system of a kind generally used for performing chemical titrations. A known analyzer system has a vertical guide on which an instrument holder is constrained to a limited range of vertical movement. The system includes one or more washing devices for at least two instruments that are positioned on the instrument holder. The washing device has at least one jet orifice that receives wash fluid by way of a supply conduit arrangement and serves to spray the fluid at the instruments to be washed. While analyzer systems of this type are known to be used for titrations, the invention is not limited to titrator systems, but is generally applicable to analyzer systems with at least one instrument or device that requires washing after an analysis has been performed. The devices or instruments to be washed include, in particular, devices of an elongated shape such as a slender tube for dispensing an additive or to aspirate a fluid sample. Elongated devices, in the present context, include devices which, by themselves are not of an elongated shape, but have an elongated carrier.
Analyzer systems of the type just described are commercially available in a variety of different designs. The washing device in one such system uses a revolving circle of jets, e.g., in the form of a centrally located Segner turbine that sprays jets of washing fluid towards the outside and thereby propels itself into rotation. With devices of this kind, several instruments or devices of a system can be sprayed with relatively high intensity and at different surface areas. However, it is hardly avoidable that washing fluid escapes from the instrument, causing the surrounding areas to become contaminated. Therefore, the washing process is always performed inside a measuring container that holds a sample fluid. Thus, with an instrument such as a measuring electrode being partially immersed in the sample fluid, only a portion of the instrument can be cleaned.
Likewise known among the existing state of the art are designs where the instrument holder itself has a plurality of receiving holes for elongated instruments of the aforementioned kind, and where each receiving hole is equipped with a wash-jet orifice. However, this concept does not allow different surface areas of the instrument to be sprayed. Rather, the wash fluid always reaches only a segment of the entire circumference of the instrument, from where the wash fluid runs downward. Thus, when pulling an elongated instrument out of its receiving hole on the instrument holder, the entire length will be exposed to the spray, but only over a limited angular portion of the circumference.
As is obvious in this latter case, wash fluid has to be supplied to each individual receiving hole. The supply conduits take up space between the holes, which reduces the number of receiving holes, and thus the number of instruments, that can be accommodated in a given limited area.